Impeached President Roh Moo-hyun began forming his legal defense team yesterday as South Korea braced for more massive anti-impeachment protests.
Rival North Korea -- in a veiled reference to the historic move to oust Roh -- meanwhile expressed concern over a "very unstable" political situation, and "unprecedented confusion" in the South.
Citing the state of affairs, Pyongyang requested that a round of inter-Korean economic talks, scheduled to begin today in the South, be switched to the Northern city of Kaesong, according to an official North Korean radio broadcast monitored by South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
Earlier in the day, Roh tapped a former adviser on civil affairs, Moon Jae-in, to put together a legal team to defend the president in the country's first ever impeachment, Roh spokesman Yoon Tae-young said. Moon is nicknamed "the king of senior presidential secretaries" for his weighty influence.
The Constitutional Court, which will rule on whether the impeachment of Roh was constitutional, plans to meet on Thursday to review the case.
Dubbed by some as a "coup without guns," the opposition-controlled parliament stunned the nation on Friday by impeaching Roh on charges of violating election rules and incompetence.
Opinion polls show that about seven in 10 South Koreans oppose the impeachment.
On Saturday night, about 50,000 angry demonstrators streamed into the streets of downtown Seoul, singing songs, waving candles and holding placards reading: "Defend Democracy!"
The movement against Roh's impeachment has found support not only among his political backers, but also from civic groups that have criticized alleged corruption in Roh's administration, his decision to send troops to Iraq and his recent tussle with authorities over illegal campaign funds ahead of next month's parliamentary elections.
In the run-up to the controversial impeachment, one Roh supporter set himself on fire and another tried to drive his car up the National Assembly steps and into the building.
But protests have been mostly peaceful.
Trying to quell concerns of a national division over the impeachment, the pro-government Uri Party vowed not to organize or lead any street protests that could fuel political unrest.
"This incident is clearly unconstitutional and illegal, but we will not stage any street demonstrations," Chung told business leaders yesterday.
Chung also urged the Constitutional Court for a swift ruling on the impeachment.
"It is completely up to the Constitutional Court whether this national emergency will last a week, a month or three months," he said.
The People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, a civic group that sponsored Saturday's protest, called for nightly rallies in downtown Seoul to oppose what it calls the "oppression by the majority under the pretext of law."
The group is often critical of Roh, but says the opposition has gone too far.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS